ENHANCED TUMOR-DETECTION IN THE PRESENCE OF FATTY LIVER-DISEASE - CELL-SPECIFIC CONTRAST AGENTS

It is assumed that hepatobiliary, cell-specific contrast agents will b e adversely affected by the presence of diffuse liver disease. The dia gnostic efficacy for tumor detection in the presence of fatty liver di sease was experimentally studied at contrast-enhanced magnetic resonan ce (MR) imaging with manganese-DPDP (NN'-dipyridoxylethylenediamine-N, N'-diacetate 5,5'-bis[phosphate]) and gadobenate dimeglumine (Gd-BOPTA /dimeg) and compared with conventional and chemical shift imaging. Car cinosarcoma was implanted into the liver of rats, and fatty liver was induced with L-ethionine. Without contrast agents. the tumor-fatty liv er contrast-to-noise ratio (C/N) was increased on T1-weighted and decr eased on T2-weighted MR images relative to tumor-control rats without fatty liver. Chemical shift imaging (phase-contrast method) increased the tumor-fatty liver C/N from 2.3 +/- 1.0 to 6.1 +/- 1.7 (P <.001). M n-DPDP and Gd-BOPTA/dimeg increased the tumor-fatty liver C/N from - 5 .4 +/- 1.6 to - 11.0 +/- 1.9 and - 9.8 +/- 3.4. respectively (P <.001) . The hepatobiliary cell-specific contrast agents were equally effecti ve in both fatty and non-fatty liver and outperformed both chemical sh ift and conventional MR imaging in detecting liver tumors.